


If We Were Vampires

by shewasjustagirl



Series: The Nashville Sound [4]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Inspired by Music, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-12-27 08:17:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12077169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewasjustagirl/pseuds/shewasjustagirl
Summary: I highly recommend Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's album, The Nashville Sound. It's some really great music, including the fantastic If We Were Vampires.





	If We Were Vampires

**Author's Note:**

> I highly recommend Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's album, The Nashville Sound. It's some really great music, including the fantastic If We Were Vampires.

Angelenos live in a state of perpetual summer. The changing of seasons never touches the city. The grass is always green. People fade in and out, but the city’s inhabitants remain young and beautiful, the dreams of small town kids serving as its ever-deepening fountain of youth. 

For six years, it’s been home to two men who would turn forty soon, a number that drew out self-conscious double takes in the shared mirror on their way to the bright lights of their set. 

The two of them had gotten late starts on only a few things in life. They’d gotten married young. Had babies young. They’d found each other, for the first time, before they knew better than to allow another person to become integral to their individual identities. 

They were young when they committed to do something, an important, creative something, together. But they were late getting to Los Angeles. 

It took years to dislodge their deep, tangled roots from the Carolina soil. The California sun did its best to wash them clean when they arrived, two families in tow, but bits of the past clung to them, and neither of them fought to shake those remaining pieces off for good. 

They were late finding each other, the second time they discovered that they were one. They finally realized something had been between them, this new layer that needed air and sunshine and room to breathe. 

It came to them easy and slow, gradually working them into one another’s arms. In many ways they remained the same, but they became a new being, the evolution occurring over a season rather than an eon. 

Today, knowing the many years they’ve already spent together, this thing going unexplored, it can feel like _too late_. Like _not enough time_. So when he reaches out, interlaces fingers in the sand, and he's asked whether it's totally necessary, he simply says yes. It’s why, when he's left with the watermarks of their time together, the trails from fingernails on his back, he smiles at them fondly. 

When sharp-edged jokes, the kind that expose insecurity, come spilling forth between them, he assures his best friend, partner, lover, that they aren't getting old. They're very much a part of the Los Angeles summer. They aren't knocking on the door of autumn, not yet, no matter how many times grey hairs have to be dyed brown again and no matter how many wrinkles appear around their eyes. 

They have time. They're still young for now. And they will live forever on the internet; they can be found at nearly any stage of life there. In a way, they will be forever young. 

This adopted home is theirs, but they're not from here. Where they're from, the leaves turn brown. The seasons are unavoidable, comfortable, like the embrace of an old friend. There's no need for them to run from the changing seasons the way they're expected to as Californians. 

They emerged into summer together, and they'll face autumn without fear. Hand-in-hand they'll walk toward it, knowing they can't go on forever, making the most of all the time they were given.

**Author's Note:**

> Any comments and kudos would be much appreciated!  
> You can find me on Tumblr as [clemwasjustagirl](http://clemwasjustagirl.tumblr.com/).


End file.
